museum

Monet and Mitchell in Paris

-Bonjour Joan, bienvenu à Paris.
-Merci beaucoup, Claude, I’m so happy we could meet here at the museum. Thank you for inviting me.
-You’re very welcome but before we look at pictures, I need to make a little confession. When I received your letter, I thought you were the girl who wrote songs, and I wondered what we would have to say to each other. Don’t get me wrong, they are lovely songs but not really my thing and I’m relieved to find you are not only a painter, but one whom I admire.
-Merci Claude and may I say, coming from you it is a great compliment.
-Shall we sit for a cup of tea? We cannot smoke in the galleries. Even I am forbidden. Seems grossly unjust, nevertheless…

Monet lit his pipe, Mitchell fished a cigarette from her purse, and they began to talk.
-I love your later work. I appreciate what came before but they do not move me in the same way. The haystacks, Rouen, London, they are beautiful to be sure, but to me, they are of the past. But the work from the last few years of your…
She stopped, suddenly unsure of what to say.
-A technicality, my dear, we will speak of it later, but I’m beginning to understand your reputation for speaking your mind. In any case, the later works are certainly more about impressions than observations. They are what I see but filtered by my senses and memories. Perhaps I should call them sensations?
-I’d stick with impressions, Claude, it feels right.
-Very well. I’m not surprised that the more abstract works most appeal to you.
-Yes, we speak the same language. But the power is also in your palette. It’s more expansive, mauves and reds are there. They never were before.
-That is true.
-And your brush strokes are freer. They flow as if you had learned to fly.
-I would like that. But, if I may, I see a similar progression in your art. I worried about your early paintings—all that black. I thought you were at war with yourself.
-Maybe so, or maybe it was a reflection of the world I lived in or the struggle for acceptance.
-Perhaps, but often I think that struggle is essential to art. If it’s too easy, one becomes a painter of toys, of poodles and balloons. But you grew. I thought you may have resolved some conflicts. Your work matured without softening, you drew us into your world and allowed us to feel the emotions within you. It’s a rare gift.
-It’s not something I can explain.
-There’s no need. It’s there for those who choose to see.
-And you, Claude. The world waits in long lines to share just a touch of your vision.
-Not really. Certainly, they attend my expositions, but only to take a photograph to prove they were there—here in Paris, or wherever—to people who really don’t give a shit. I’m not sure they ever see the paintings. But enough. I want to talk about color. After most of the black was gone, you began to add solid blocks of mauve and magenta at what seemed to me a most unexpected time and place.

-You don’t like them?
-On the contrary. They attract and refresh the eye, while adding gravitas to the entire composition.
-You did much the same.
-Close, but not the same. I splashed some similar colors among the greens and blues, but I have never painted those solid blocks with the same confidence as you.
-You’re very generous, but I’m not sure it was confidence I felt.
-All the same, I want to talk about your yellow. I don’t know how you do it. The color is astonishing, as if you are painting the sun. You seared my eyes and brought me joy at the same time. There’s nothing like it.
-I’d love to see your interpretation.
-They weren’t right. I destroyed them.
-I’m sorry.
-It’s quite all right. The world has you.
-I don’t know what to say.
-Nothing. But you should get together with Vincent. Now there’s a man who knows yellow.
-Those sunflowers. My God.
-Yes. They can make you believe.
-Almost. But tell me about what I see as your movement toward abstraction. No one else was there with you.
-The truth is I could no longer see very well. I think to truly understand, you must come to Giverny.
-I would like nothing more.
They looked at each other with a shared understanding, a true meeting of compatible souls.
-Claude, I have to ask. If it’s too painful you don’t have to answer, but—aren’t you dead?
Monet relit his pipe as he considered how to answer.
-Technically, I suppose that’s true, but the real truth is that my life is my work. And it remains, as will yours.

The Louvre

Family in town so we’re doing the right things. Today was the big museum with the pyramid and the lady from the DaVinci Code novel. She is there. I know because I’m tall and my camera is bigger than most.

This is some really athletic art appreciation, something like a rugby scrum. I know nothing about rugby but I imagine it takes strength, determination and some sharp elbows to work your way through the scrummy thing, which is exactly what’s needed to get to see the lady in question. But all I really need is to get close enough to get a picture, so I’ll always have the memory.

I used to think people took pictures of pictures to have the memory and avoid the gift shop, but here’s the thing: It’s not the art, it’s the experience. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Paris ☑Louvre ☑What’s her name ☑

Don’t worry. I’m not going to get all snobby about this, wonder why people do it, and then blame Facebook. Not me. I live in the real world and I’d rather blame Facebook for much bigger crimes.

I see nothing wrong with people taking pictures of art. I’m glad they do it. Glad they support the museums with their tickets and glad the museums have wised up and allow it. I’m not sure what people take from the experience, but it certainly can’t hurt.

Shoot Pictures. Not People.

The Boy in the Film

I’m not sure why this image haunts me. At first I thought he resembled me at that age but now I’m not sure. This picture was made at the Mémorial du Camp de Rivesaltes, from a film about camp inmates that is projected on the wall of the museum.

I’m not much of a believer in fate; the idea that I might have been drawn to this place, to this story because of some unknown personal connection doesn’t resonate. I’ve never uncovered any evidence of any member of my family having been at this camp, and I simply do not believe in reincarnation, which nixes the thought that it might in fact be me. It’s tempting but I’ve already written this book and I’m not in it.

So what’s going on here?

My best guess is that the superficial resemblance cemented an emotional connection to the camp that informs the novel. That connection began with my first visit to the site, deepened with the photos I made that day, and went further with the research that followed. It became personal with the challenge in the eyes of this boy looking directly into the camera.

I’m not sure how old he is. I would have thought about fifteen but the dark pouches under his eyes belong to an older man. He is shirtless, which would suggest summer heat on the Rivesaltes plain, and while his face is thin, we cannot see his torso and can’t know for sure if he has had enough to eat. He looks healthy and his direct gaze projects strength.

I’d like to think he survived. Perhaps he was one of the more than six hundred children who were saved from the camp by the heroic efforts led by Friedel Bohny-Reiter of Secours Suisse aux Enfants. Perhaps he made it to a home in the region and was raised by one of the many anonymous families who risked their own lives to save the children of strangers. He could have grown up to be an artist, a musician, or a writer. Or maybe he settled nearby, married, raised a family, plowed his vineyards, and sent his fruit to the coop. Maybe he still does.

I am not the boy. I am the camera.

Memorial du Camp de Rivesaltes

It’s not easy to find. I expected it to be near the roadside steles that have been in place for years but it’s not there and there are no signs to indicate where they have built this memorial and museum to tell the story of the camp at Rivesaltes. I have to wonder if there isn’t still an element of shame alongside the better instinct that allowed it to be built so we would not forget. More likely just a bureaucratic delay, the museum only opened to the public this week. You can find it at the base of the wind farm.

Camps of all kinds are, of course, numerous and widespread; from Auschwitz to Manzanar they are a feature of life on a planet where war is common. But Rivesaltes is unique in the variety of different populations it has detained: Spanish refugees from the civil war; German intellectuals fleeing Nazism, Roma, Jews, German military prisoners of war, Harkis. Rivesaltes holds the history of twentieth century European conflict.

The site of the camp is huge, over 600 hectares that now wraps around an industrial zone, and the museum has been built behind that zone, beside a farm of wind generators, far from the department road. You would not find it if you didn’t know where to look.

The museum building itself is built into the ground and from above resembles a soaring monument at rest, surrounded by the crumbling barracks and latrines of the detention camp on their way to returning to the earth. There is a path circling the building and, on an overcast day with the wind blowing, you can almost feel what it must have been like to be imprisoned here.

The entrance is a long descending ramp that appears to lead nowhere, but turns to the right to reveal a door.

The receipt for my eight euro entrance fee is printed with the name Marie Weiss-Loeffer, a young Roma woman, and the date of her escape 10 Novembre, 1941.

The main room is divided into sections that tell the story of each of the populations with historical footage projected on the rough cement walls, oral testimonials accessible through tablets, and informational films on video monitors. And there is also a look forward, a consideration of how we will deal with the same issues in the 21^st century. The overlapping sounds and the design of the structure itself simulate the lack of privacy in barracks life.

The overwhelming amount of information takes its toll and you begin to understand the incomprehensible scale of devastation. Camps like this were created to separate us from those we fear. They continue to be built today.

http://www.memorialcamprivesaltes.eu